


Memories (or, a Plotless Explosion of Fluff)

by Perian_Swan



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Quest, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-12 01:43:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7915606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perian_Swan/pseuds/Perian_Swan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Quest AU in which Mr. and Mrs. Frodo Baggins discuss their memories and are disgustingly cute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories (or, a Plotless Explosion of Fluff)

Disclaimer: Read at your own risk! This story is probably the most embarrassing thing I have ever written. It is self-indulgent, Mary Sue awfulness that I wrote to put some of my fangirlish daydreams into words, and that I originally was not going to share with anyone. However, if you too suffer from (or perhaps enjoy?) hopeless crushes on fictional characters, particularly if one of those fictional characters happens to be named Frodo Baggins…here you go.

* * *

 

_Your love is my turning page_

_Where only the sweetest words remain._

_Every kiss is a cursive line;_

_Every touch is a redefining phrase._

_I surrender who I’ve been_

_For who you are._

_For nothing makes me stronger than_

_Your fragile heart._

_Though we’re tethered_

_To the story we must tell,_

_When I saw you,_

_Well, I knew we’d tell it well._

_With a whisper_

_We will tame the vicious seas,_

_Like a feather_

_Bringing kingdoms to their knees._

\- from “Turning Page” by Sleeping at Last

* * *

 

I saw the flash out of the corner of my eye and instinctively nestled closer into Frodo’s side. Thunderstorms were occurrences that simultaneously fascinated and frightened me, but I liked to emphasize the frightened part just a little more when I was with him. I braced myself as I heard the faint rumbling I knew would swell into a mighty roar that would shake the walls of our house.

Truthfully, I was enjoying myself. There was nothing quite like a summer storm to add a little spice and variety to the middle of a long string of golden, sunny days, I thought as the din of the thunder died down and was replaced with a cacophony of dull thuds, most likely rain or hail, hitting the side of the hill outside.

Inside, a fire was crackling in the grate, filling the room with its warmth and cheerful, flickering light. On the table beside the sofa sat a fat little teapot, two delicate, steaming teacups on saucers, and a plate heaped with a generous helping of the shortbread cookies I’d baked yesterday. We were curled up contentedly on the floor in front of the fire, our backs against the sofa. The lightning flashed again.

“You’re not actually afraid, are you?” Frodo asked softly.

“No,” I answered.

“Then why are you hiding your face in my shoulder?”

I smiled. “Because I like your shoulder. And your smell. And you,” I mumbled into the fabric of his shirt.

I heard him chuckle as he tightened his arm around me and pressed a kiss to my temple. I felt safe, relaxed, comfortable, and content. The feeling of contentedness would have been stronger and more energetic, more like euphoria, if I hadn’t been so very sleepy…

* * *

 

When I awoke, the storm had long passed and silence reigned. The fire had dwindled down to a few peacefully glowing embers and the room was dark. I rolled over to look out the window and was greeted with the happy sight of summer stars, suspended in an inky blue sky. I rolled back over to face Frodo. I’d always thought him beautiful, but something about the way he looked when he slept was almost too much. His curls were tousled over his forehead, and his eyelashes made dark, delicate shadows over his cheekbones. His mouth was slack, and I suppressed a giggle when I noticed that he was drooling on the rug. I pulled the blanket tighter around myself and closed my eyes, listening to the sound of his slow, even breaths beside me, letting them lull me back to sleep.

Only they didn’t. I heard them begin to speed up and become ragged and irregular. I opened my eyes and saw that his brows were furrowed, and his eyes were moving frenetically under his eyelids. I watched with concern as he started to moan and whimper. When it got to be too much for me, I put my hand on his shoulder and gently shook him awake. It took him a few seconds to shake off the dream, and seeing the naked panic in his eyes as he looked around him in confusion felt like the sharp prick of a knife in my heart.

“You were having a bad dream, dear,” I whispered, massaging slow, soothing circles into his shoulder. “You’re safe now, alright? You’re safe.”

He nodded and buried his face in my chest, winding his arms around my waist, as if to assure himself that I was really there. I kissed the top of his head and began quietly humming the song we thought of as ours, and for a few minutes we lay still. Then he pulled slightly away from me and looked into my eyes and said, “I didn’t think you were real, you know.”

I wasn’t quite sure where this was coming from, but I smiled and said, “I didn’t think you were real either, you know,” and propped myself on one elbow so I could touch my lips to the delicate point of his ear. After a few more moments passed, I asked, “Do you want to talk about your dream?”

“It was just a flashback. The usual. I’d lost It, and then I didn’t see you anymore, and I couldn’t decide which was worse.”

His eyes grew wide, alarmed. He thought he’d offended me. “Not to say that you’re in any way—“

“No, it’s alright,” I interrupted, smoothing back a lock of his hair. “I understand. Not to say that I completely understand what you went through, because I don’t; I didn’t go through it myself, but I saw that Its hold was…very powerful, and I want you to be able to talk to me about it whenever you need to, without worrying that you’re going to say something I might not like. I want to be a completely safe place for you.”

“You already are, love. More than you know.” He twined his fingers with mine and began absentmindedly playing with them. “I don’t want to dwell on the dream anymore. It’s over now, and you’re here, and you’re real.” He paused. “Are you tired?”

“No.”

“Then could we talk about our memories?”

I smiled. “Which ones?”

“The good ones, of course.”

“We have a lot of those. That doesn’t narrow it down much.”

“Which one is your favorite?”

I paused to think for a moment. A flood of recent memories swirled around in my mind. There was the time he was trying to teach me what he knew of the Sindarin language and as I was trying to construct a sentence I made an apparently very humorous mistake. When he, choking back laughter, tried to tell me what it was, I started laughing too, and pretty soon we were wiping tears out of our eyes. There was the time we were walking home together from town and got caught in a rainstorm, and I stopped walking and gave him a look that he knew as my Come Hither Gaze. He gave me an incredulous look in return and said, “What, _now?_ ” And I told him how it was thought very romantic in the world I was from to kiss in the rain and he rolled his eyes at me but set down the parcels he was carrying and smoothed my hair out of my face, and we tried to kiss there under the trees, but we just ended up getting water in our mouths and hair and looking like drowned rats by the time we got home. Or, there was the time Sam and Rosie were away visiting some of Rosie’s relatives and they left Elanor with us, and we took her to a lovely meadow near our house and had a picnic in the sunshine with Merry and Pippin, and, per Elanor’s suggestion, we collected worms of all varieties and held a race for them in the grass. There was the time he wrote me a poem and read it to me, and it was so beautiful that it made me cry. And so many other happy moments.

“Okay, this is kind of weird, but do you remember a few weeks ago when we had that perfect weather and I was outside working in the garden?”

“Yes, I remember,” he said, smiling fondly at me. “You were wearing that little straw sunhat.”

“Yes, to protect my skin from getting too freckled,” I said, returning his smile and rolling my eyes. It seemed that no matter what I did, I had freckles on my face year-round.

He leaned in and pressed a myriad of soft, sweet kisses to my cheeks and nose. “ _I_ like your freckles. Each one of them. They’re like little stars.”

I giggled and wrinkled my nose. “My freckles are like stars,” I said dryly. “Really. Anyway,” I continued, trying to keep my focus, “you had just gotten the mail and you were on your way back inside the house, but when you walked by me you ducked your head under my hat and kissed me in a way that was…not entirely proper.”

“Yes, and I made you blush.”

“And you looked so proud of yourself! You know it’s not that hard to do.”

The self-satisfied smirk reappeared on his face. “I know.”

“Well, _you_ didn’t see the scandalized look on our neighbor’s face. Kissing in public!”

“We weren’t in public, we were in our front yard!”

“Well, we were within sight of others, clearly.”

“And _why_ was this one of your favorite memories?”

“Well, the expression on her face _was_ extremely funny . . . and . . . I sort of like it when you kiss me like that. As if you didn’t know.”

He grinned widely, exposing the cute little gap between his front teeth. “Oh, I know.”

I shook my head. “You are altogether too self-assured about the effect you have on me. It would be disgusting if it wasn’t so adorable.”

“I know,” he repeated and laughed.

I sighed. “Your turn.”

“Well,” he said, still grinning, “my favorite memory is _not_ when our neighbor caught us snogging in the garden; it’s when I married you.”

“Oh, that was alright, I guess.” Frodo and I had gotten married under the silvery mallorn in the Party Field on a fine spring afternoon. I’d worn a gauzy, white gown Rosie had made for me, and I’d carried a little bouquet of soft, fragrant lavender. I remembered exactly how it had felt to walk down the aisle of sweet-smelling grass and wildflowers between our family and friends, my eyes locked on my soon-to-be-husband’s eyes, which were smiling and filled with tears. We had had a short, simple ceremony. The reception that followed was full of love and joy and dancing and cake, and lots of ale.

“It was more than _alright_ , and you know it,” he said.

I smiled softly. “Yes it was. What was your favorite part?”

“We’ve already had this conversation about a dozen times.”

“I know. But tell me again.”

“My favorite part was when I saw you walking toward me. You know I’ve always thought your smile beautiful, but I’d never seen you smile like that before. There were a lot of thoughts swirling around in my mind, and most of them I couldn’t put into words if I tried, but mainly I was thinking that such heights of happiness should be impossible, especially for me, and also that I’d never seen anything or anyone so beautiful.”

For a second all I could do was stare at him dumbly. “Well, beauty _is_ in the eye of the beholder,” I choked out, “and you do have quite beautiful eyes, even though that is not what that phrase technically refers to… But seriously, Frodo, prettier than Arwen? Than _Galadriel_?”

He kissed my lips. “To me, yes. They are Elves. Their beauty, although great, is high and cold and remote. Yours, my love, is soft and sweet and familiar. It’s home.”

“Dang it,” I whispered as a tear spilled out of the corner of my eye. He rested his hand gently on my cheek and caught the tear with his thumb.

“It’s hard to believe you’re not even a Hobbit,” he mused, moving his hand from my cheek and tracing his fingers along the curve of my ear. “You fit in here so well.”

“I know.” I sniffled. “I think I belong here much better than I did in my world. Although it’s still a little strange, being this short. In my world, I would have been a good two feet taller than you, you know.” I grinned.

“I’m rather glad we’re not in your world then, although it does fascinate me. Could you tell me more about what it’s like there?”

“Hmm, what haven’t I told you…? Let me think for a second.”

His hand moved from my ear and up toward my forehead. “You have the tiniest little dimple right here that pops out whenever you concentrate, did you know that? Oh, now it’s gone.”

“That’s because you’re making it awfully hard to concentrate.”

“Oh dear, I’m sorry,” he said exaggeratedly clearing his throat and rolling away from me. “Wouldn’t want to mess with your concentration…”

In a second he was back, and his hands were moving lightly over the skin on my waist, right where he knew I was most ticklish.

“You _little_ \--!” I shrieked as I tried to squirm out of his arms.

He didn’t stop, just threw back his head and laughed, as if my reaction was the most hilarious thing he’d ever seen. Alright, this was war. I wasn’t the only one who was ticklish.

Less than a minute later, he was begging for mercy. Well, actually he was giggling and saying “truce” over and over again 

“Okay, okay,” I said. “You really should know better than to start a tickle fight with me. I always win.”

“Well, then,” he said, still gasping. “Where were we?”

“Talking about our wedding, silly. Well, and my world. Which isn’t nearly as nice a subject as the former.”

“Right. Sorry, you distracted me.”

“ _I_ distracted _you_?”

“You always distract me.”

“Always? Oh dear, I guess I’ll have to work on being less distracting. Although I’m not entirely sure how I’ll manage that, since I’m not sure what I was doing that was so terribly distracting in the first place. I think—“

I suddenly found my flow of rambling speech not unwelcomely cut off by my husband’s lips. “Now,” he said, pulling away, “let’s get back to the original topic. What was _your_ favorite part of our wedding?”

It took me a second to unscramble my thoughts. “Oh, definitely the cake,” I said jokingly, although my voice was a little unsteady.

“Are you _sure_ you’re not a Hobbit?”

I giggled. “The dancing was fun. Even though I was embarrassingly bad at it.”

“You weren’t _embarrassingly_ bad at it. You were, however…not very good at it.”

I gasped. “You’re not supposed to agree with me!”

“What? A husband not supposed to agree with his wife? Besides, I didn’t agree with you. You said you were embarrassingly bad at dancing. I only said you weren’t very good. And also, you were so cute, jumping around with that enchanting little flower crown in your hair and that bewitching smile on your face, that nobody minded.”

I felt a slight influx of blood in my cheeks. “Now _that’s_ embarrassing,” I muttered. I decided it was my turn to bring the subject back to where it had been before. “Really the whole wedding was my favorite. Even the little hiccups and awkward moments, like when we caught one of your cousins trying to make off with one of the gifts and when Sam’s sister tried to hit on Gimli, and when Tom Bombadil started singing in the middle of the ceremony. But I think the highlight was the moment we were officially pronounced husband and wife and you held my hand as we walked back up the aisle and everyone clapped and I knew that you were finally mine but it felt so good that I couldn’t quite believe it. It felt like the first page of the most wonderful story. That might be the cheesiest thing I’ve ever said, but it’s true, and I love you, and I’m so glad I found you.”

And then he was kissing me again.

“I liked your proposal too, by the way,” I said when I could breathe again. “It was my favorite ever.”

“Your favorite ever? What, have you had others?” His voice was teasing, but I could sense a subtle undercurrent of worry.

“No. Why, does the idea make you feel jealous?”

“I just didn’t know if there was someone in your world who…” he trailed off.

“No, there was never anyone like that for me except you. I would have told you if there was. I just meant that even compared with all the proposals I’ve ever seen or heard about or read about, real _and_ fictional, yours was my favorite. In my world, it seems like people are always trying to outdo each other, and make marriage proposals these big spectacles in front of everyone, and I always knew I didn’t want something like that. I wanted it to be special and private and simple, which was exactly what yours was.”

“Well, I’m glad you liked it. It didn’t happen quite as smoothly as I had planned it to, but I suppose the important thing was that you said yes, once you were able to stop staring at me in shock.”

He had asked me if I’d like to take a walk with him in the woods one afternoon, out of the blue. I was generally always up for walks in the woods, and especially for spending time with him. Before we had gone far I could sense that he was nervous, and I didn’t know what it meant. I’d never thought much of myself, and I worried he might be planning to tell me he didn’t want to see me anymore. It reminded me of a story from my world that I’d read many times. I remembered that in one part of it, the main character’s love had also abruptly asked her to go for a walk in the forest with him, and there he had told her he didn’t love her anymore and left without a trace. I couldn’t keep the ominous thoughts out of my mind, especially when we arrived at our meadow, and the imagined connection between her story and mine was reinforced. She and her love had had their own special meadow too.

When Frodo had stopped walking and looked at me for a while as if trying to find the right words or perhaps the courage with which to express some inner emotion or conviction, and then softly asked me how I felt about him, my uneasiness turned into cold fear. But I’d answered him honestly. “You are my favorite person in the entire world. In _all_ the worlds,” I amended.

“Do you love me, then?”

Why was he asking me this? He had to have known. “Yes,” I’d answered, quietly but fervently. And then I couldn’t handle the suspense anymore. Something was clearly up, and it was best to just get it over with. “Are you…are you…breaking up with me?” I’d asked hesitantly. It was silly because the terminology I’d just used wasn’t quite right and wouldn’t have made sense to him anyway, but he seemed to at least understand that whatever “breaking up” was, it wasn’t at all what he was trying to do right now.

His face had taken on the warmest, sweetest expression as he looked at me. He had stroked my cheek with the most gentle and loving of touches and said, “No, silly girl, I’m trying to ask you to marry me.”

His expression and his words had left me completely speechless, almost thoughtless, for what felt like a solid minute. I wish I could say that the first words out of my mouth had been an eloquent and romantic declaration of acceptance and love, but instead all I’d said was, “Wait, _what_?”

“Do you have any idea how much that frightened me?” asked Frodo, bringing me back to the present.

“What, proposing to me? Yes, I know; I could tell. But I’m sure that kind of thing frightens everyone.”

“Well, yes, proposing to you certainly did frighten me. But I was referring specifically to your reaction to my proposal.”

“It’s just, I always thought I’d be perceptive enough to see something like that coming. I think before I even met you I knew that if you ever asked, I’d say yes. But…I didn’t think you _would_. I mean, I knew you liked me at least a little…”

“A little!” he scoffed.

“…But not that much.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t make fun of you, because I wasn’t sure about your feelings for me either. I felt I was taking an enormous risk in asking you to marry me. Neither of us was very demonstrative then, were we?”

“No. But I think, and Sam and Rosie will likely emphatically agree, that we’ve quite made up for that now.”

“You think so?” he grinned.

“It’s a possibility,” I said, returning his smile as I trailed my fingertips along his jawline and brought my lips to his. “They’re probably sick of us but too nice to say anything about it.” I kissed him again. “I think it’s your turn to talk about a memory now.”

“I’ll always remember the first time I saw you. In reality, not just in a dream, although I’ll always remember the dream too.”

“What was going through your mind? I always wondered.”

“I’d never thought I’d see you again. I’d been sure that you were just a figment of my imagination, created by my mind as a protection against the horrors I went through. So I was sure, after it was over, that you’d never appear to me again. But there you were, months later, in some of the safest circumstances imaginable. I didn’t know what to think. I thought perhaps I’d managed to dream you up again somehow, until Sam noticed me staring at you as if I’d seen a ghost, and then followed my gaze and asked who the strange girl watching us from the trees was." 

I’d always been an extraordinarily shy person. Whenever I’d imagined myself in Middle-earth, which I’d done frequently during the latter part of my time in the world I’d been born into, I had conveniently discarded that large part of my nature, or rather, that hindrance to the expression of my personality, as I had been more wont to think of it. But when I came to Middle-earth in the flesh, I discovered that a few things really were too good to be true, and my shyness had come with me as a very unwelcome fellow traveller. It had been easier to push it aside when my only role was that of a comforter and helper. Although I’d maintained that role, now I also had to do things like properly introduce myself and make small talk. And dance. Not my forte, clearly.

So I had watched for a little while before making myself known. There was a small dance in a large field on the edge of a forest, and I gazed at the proceedings with fascinated eyes. It reminded me of how Bilbo and the Dwarves must have felt, watching the Elves feasting in a magical, merry pool of light, from their own place in the dark, twisted, creepy deadness of Mirkwood. This forest was no Mirkwood, though. It was of the Shire, friendly and green and living, and it felt safe. It hid me from eyes that I felt might be too curious, too full of questions whose answers I didn’t know how to explain, and even if I did, the explanations surely would not be believed.

Still, I felt myself drawn forward toward the Hobbits and their festivities, almost like a small paperclip to a magnet. I crept forward in spite of myself to get a closer view. I watched all of them, but mostly my eyes strayed to Frodo. He was one of the only ones not dancing, and it worried me. I had thought of him often, hoping that maybe this time around he wouldn’t suffer so much, hoping that maybe I had been able to help, to change the way things had been for him. I studied his face as closely as I could from my distance. Was his expression sad, or just meditative? I hadn’t realized how close I’d come until I saw his eyes glance up. He had felt me watching him.

His gaze transfixed me; I wanted to retreat backwards into the trees, but I couldn’t move. I saw him get up and begin walking toward me, and still I couldn’t move. I abruptly felt such an intense wave of emotion on seeing him again that my eyes welled up and spilled over. He paused a few feet away from me, looking concerned but uncertain, and then he hesitantly closed the distance between us and touched his hand lightly to my shoulder, as if checking to see if I was real. I saw the surprise widen his eyes as his hand came into contact with the fabric of my dress and felt the sturdiness of my shoulder bone underneath. Then he seemed to recollect his manners, and brought his hand swiftly back and into his pocket, from which he produced a clean, white, monogrammed handkerchief, which he politely handed to me. We still hadn’t spoken, and I was beginning to feel a bit awkward, although no less speechless. I took the handkerchief from him and whispered the words “thank you” before using it to blot the tears from my cheeks and eyes. I noticed that he started slightly when he heard the sound of my voice. I handed him the handkerchief when I was finished, but when his hand met mine his fingers closed around the back of my hand as if to say, “Keep it,” and he brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. “Thank you,” he said fervently, looking into my eyes again. “For all you’ve done.”

“I haven’t done anything,” I said sadly as more tears escaped my eyes.

“Yes, you have. More than you know.” He gazed at me for a moment, confusion furrowing the smooth skin of his brow as he brought his hand forward again and brushed a tear off my cheek with his thumb. “Why are you crying?” he asked.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you. I’m fine, just a little emotional.” I dashed the rest of the tears off my face with the back of my hand. “But how are you? Why aren’t you dancing?”

“I was waiting for you, of course.”

His words sent a shock through me, both because _I_ hadn’t even known I would be here, and also because wait, was he asking me to dance? Crap, I wasn’t prepared for this.

“Were you expecting me?” I asked.

“No,” he admitted. “Truthfully I didn’t expect I’d ever see you again. But I hoped.”

So we danced, or rather he danced and I lumbered along like a tiny, clumsy troll. I wondered if it surprised him that the mysterious comforter who had visited him in dreams during his darkest hours was this lacking in coordination. At least we weren’t quite out in front of everyone; we stayed under the protective eave of the trees. And I told him of my own dream, of the way Estë the Gentle, sparkling grey like sunshine on beads of rain after the passing of a storm, and her husband Irmo, Master of Visions and Dreams, looking like a flickering soft green blend of light and mist in the shape of a man, somehow both mighty and intangible, had appeared to me and told me they had a special task for me, if I wished to accept it. At this point I thought I’d gone crazy, but I figured I might as well enjoy the crazy while it lasted. So every night in my dreams I went to Middle-earth, a much more vivid, real Middle-earth than I ever could have dreamed up on my own. The Valar had given me a small measure of power to heal, comfort, and restore, just by being present, although I never got to be present in the fleshly way I was now. I had appeared to Frodo primarily in his dreams, and when he saw me during his waking hours, I was only a vague, shadowy presence, more felt than seen. 

Neither of us could figure out why I was back again, until, months later, Irmo and Estë appeared again, this time to both of us as we were walking together in the forest, and told us that it had been their little plan all along to get the two of us to fall in love, although apparently they couldn’t tell us that earlier because it could’ve jinxed the whole thing. (Although of course they explained it much more eloquently.) But now that the falling in love had already happened, they were here to ask me if I’d like to stay in Middle-earth for good. My answer had been embarrassingly unhesitant. Even if we _were_ already engaged. Later I’d asked Frodo if he was sure he still wanted to marry me, now that it was certain I was staying and there wasn’t any chance of me randomly disappearing the in the same way I had seemingly randomly appeared those several months ago. Now that things were different, he could take back the proposal if he wanted. But he just shook his head and laughed and kissed my cheek. “Not a chance,” he said (using a phrase he’d picked up from me) although later he approached me again and asked if _I_ was still sure. There were a lot of lovely reasons to stay in Middle-earth that had nothing to do with him and he didn’t want to make me feel like I had to marry him just because—I cut off his flow of speech by hesitantly pressing my lips to his. I’d seen people do that in movies and had always secretly wanted to try it. It had the desired effect of causing him to lose his train of thought completely and of answering his question without words. We were married within a year.

I was brought back to the present by the gentle pressure of a hand caressing my shoulder and the sound of quiet laughter. “Where have you been these five minutes, my dear? Off dreaming of rainbows and white stags and butterflies and fairy dust by the look of it.”

I returned the shoulder caress by giving his shoulder a playful nudge. “Don’t be silly. I was thinking of when we met at the dance. And as for white stags, as lovely as I’m sure they are, I don’t need any of them. My wishes have been granted already.”

“You’re really surprisingly cheesy, did you know that?” Another word he’d learned from me.

“If I’m cheesy, you’re like…absolutely drenched in cheddar.”

“Cheddar? No, _I_ am not cheesy. I am romantic. So I’m not cheddar, I’m the finest French Roquefort,” he said, laughing.

“How do you know more about the cheese from my world than I do?" 

He laughed again. “I think we’ve strayed from our topic. It’s your turn to talk about a memory, I believe.”

“My favorite memory is this one,” I said simply. “Right now.” 

He stared at me for a moment without saying anything. I felt that there was profound love in his expression and for a moment it almost knocked the breath out of me, the realization that this sweet, pure, heroic, kind, beautiful soul actually loved _me._ He brought me out of my reverie again by speaking. “I don’t know if something that is happening in the present can be considered a memory.”

“Maybe not,” I conceded. “It’s a gift.”

“What’s a gift?”

“The _present._ ” I grinned, waiting for him to get my awful joke.

I saw the awareness dawn on his face, and then he groaned. “ _You_ are not even cheddar. You’re like that terrible, orange, canned variety.”

I shrugged. “I guess it’s part of my charm. And now it’s your turn again, love.”

“Perhaps it’s all this talk about cheese, but do you remember when you taught us to make…oh dear, what’s it called?”

“You know of the existence of Roquefort cheese, but you don’t know what pizza is.”

“Oh, pizza! Thank you. Yes, we were all in the kitchen clumsily tossing about bits of the dough and catching them in our hands, getting flour all over our the place, laughing like children. Merry and Pippin wouldn’t stop their ceaseless chatter until the pizza was out of the oven and they started eating, and everything abruptly became very silent. It was a hit, as you would say. And did I ever tell you that those two were so enamored of the new food that when they went to Rohan to visit King Éomer, they told him of it and he was so intrigued by the idea of it that he told his head cook about it, and his head cook made some, and the King liked it so much he had it added to the meal rotation at Edoras?”

“You’re making that up.”

“I am not! Ask Merry.”

“Merry made it up, then.”

“I don’t think he did.”

“Wait. So you’re saying that I indirectly introduced the King of Rohan to pizza? What if his subjects learn of it? What if it spreads to Gondor? Oh my gosh, then Aragorn, the freaking king of Middle-earth would know about it. Or what if it spread to Lothlórien! Can you even imagine how good Elven pizza would be?”

“You’ll be famous,” he said, playing along with me.

“Frodo Baggins, the Hobbit who saved the world. And his wife, who invented pizza.” I was cackling now. “Except,” I gasped through my laughter, “I didn’t even invent it! I only popularized it.”

He was looking at me with a half confused, half amused expression on his face, which only made me laugh harder. “I bet you had no idea when you met me that I would end up being this weird, did you?”

“I think you’re just a little tired, my love. You’re always silly when you’re tired.”

“But only when I’m tired, of course.”

“Of course.”

I started giggling again. “I don’t feel tired, actually. I feel kind of hyper… Hey, has it gotten lighter in here?” I glanced around the room.

“Yes. Soon it will be sunrise, I think. If you’re not tired we could go outside and watch,” he suggested. “And I can smoke my pipe, and you can tell me how bad it is for my health.”

“And you can tell me that the sunrise isn’t as pretty as I am, even first thing in the morning. And I can accuse you of lying.”

We sat on the bench by our front door, snuggled under a thick quilt, and gazed at the clouds as they turned fantastical shades of lavender, gold, and rose, bathing the countryside in a soft, sweet, magical light that made everything more beautiful. I felt perfectly content to sit quietly with Frodo’s arm around me and drink it all in. Occasionally he would tuck a few strands of my hair over my shoulder and touch his lips to my neck or collarbone and I suspected he was looking at me almost as much as at the sky. Which was lame, and I told him so.

“Well, after all, it’s not as pretty as you.” I was about to open my mouth to say something sarcastic, but before I could, he smiled winningly and said, “I’m just sticking to your plan.”

I rolled my eyes, but grinned, kissed him on the cheek, and said, “ _Thank_ you. Even though I think you might be lying. And by the way, smoking’s bad for you.” 

By this time the sunrise was pretty much over, so I suggested we go inside and get some breakfast. Which he, being a Hobbit, enthusiastically seconded.

Soon enough we were seated together by the fire holding plates heaped with bacon and biscuits and gravy, and a generous side of mushrooms.

“You were telling me a story,” said Frodo after a few minutes. “The one about the girl who came to live in a new place and fell in love with the mind reader? We had just gotten to the sad part, and I’ve been wondering how it turned out.”

I smiled dreamily. “Well then, let me tell you about how they were reunited, and about how they lived happily ever after…”


End file.
